Why Hyde?

“Man is not truly one, but truly two.”
Robert Louis Stevenson’s

Let’s look today at Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was an esteemed scientist who created a potion to let out Mr. Hyde, a monster of a man who was purely selfish and barbaric.  Jekyll is not a great guy, although he is not really a bad guy either. But he does have urges. He knows this about himself, and instead of acknowledging them, he suppresses and pushes the urges down to fester.  He does this to appear rigidly moral and saintly in the form of the Dr. However, he wants to be Hyde, that’s what Hyde is, his unacknowledged wants.

This all fits in conveniently with Jung’s framework (as most myths & famous stories do).  Hyde is a shadow analogy, full of the inner and dark longings in a person like greed, lust and sadistic pleasure. Jekyll is the ego, and his insistence that there is only the Dr. Jekyll and no Mr. Hyde is the problem. The “Dr” part of Jekyll is the persona, as he is overly moral and judgemental of others, never wrong, and is always doing what he thinks the “upper-class” want him to.

I am not trying to say you should trample a young girl to death or kill a member of parliament (Hyde was metal), or that you should abandon caring about your job or something important.  This Observatory does not condone you killing people, and you should try to not suck at whatever you gotta do. However, you must recognize and get to know these different parts of yourself to integrate them into your life.  Acknowledging Hyde is acknowledging the realities of life, and repressing him is what makes them uncontrollable.

Honestly You

In order to acknowledge ourselves we must understand ourselves.  That is not easy, but we need to remember, going into Hyde is not what makes Hyde come out, it is repressing him and denying that part of yourself that forces him to break free.  The safest way to acknowledge and give him his say on your terms is to be honestly and authentically you. An authentic life wills to be lived through us, and ignoring that does not change the fact. What we must do is not step fully into either, but find a healthy balance, hold the tension between them. While holding the tension will not always be an equal amount on each side, it must be enough to prevent one side from having all the control. To cling only to your ego will eventually force the other archetypes to be heard, to cling to shadow keeps you from seeing others accurately, and to cling to a persona keeps yourself from being heard by anyone, including you.

Jekyll needs and is both Hyde and the Dr., just like we both need and are our shadow and personas.  The task lies in becoming aware and finding how to balance and integrate them into your life.

Being authentic means adapting and adjusting to life inside and outside of you. It is understanding and realizing the whole you inside yourself, and expressing that you in the outer world.

pics by the Gentleman.